A primary task when operating a vehicle, such as, driving an automobile, flying a plane, conducting a train or the like, is to monitor vehicular movement to ensure safe passage of the vehicle and its contents. Often times, however, a vehicle operator will become distracted. Some common distractions include fatigue, talking on or dialing a phone, interacting with passengers, reading road signs, or the like. Such distractions tend to direct the attention of the operator away from this primary task, and contribute to many, possibly avoidable, accidents. Human factors research, moreover, shows that a distracted driver reacts slower to unpredictable and potentially dangerous events, each of which might be avoided provided increased operator awareness.
To address these and additional issues previous systems have been proposed wherein devices periodically or randomly require an operator to manually respond to an awareness indicator by pressing a button, or the like. If a response is not received, the device generates an alarm alerting the operator of potential danger. Other proposed devices attempt to monitor driver awareness based on heart metrics. For example, the device may measure fluctuations in heart rate, blood pressure, or irregular heart beat patterns. While these attempts, allegedly, increase driver awareness during times of fatigue, they are crude measures that are susceptible to false signals.